


thread

by witchfall



Series: upon an eternal wind [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Children of Characters, Gen, Past Lives, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 03:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchfall/pseuds/witchfall
Summary: They say she invented the harpsichord. The melody of birds.(He won't remember this when he is born again.)(And he is born again.)





	thread

**Author's Note:**

> what is this, i ask myself as I put off doing something for work to finish this. I don't know, but you can blame Tales from the Shadows and Keane's new album for it. no beta, i get to own my own nonsense.

You are eight years old when you first realize the world is not the way it is supposed to be.

You don't understand the shattering incongruence of your thoughts as you watch the water run down the shower wall, but you suddenly know the world is different now. You see its crushing dullness. What is the point? Why do the people in this world even try to live? It is beautiful, but it is wrong. Like when a baby chocobo spooks and your friend falls and skids their elbows horribly bloody. You can't stop looking.

You stumble out of the shower and grab your towel, for you are big enough to do this on your own, and you run to the living room. Your wet feet slap the metal floors of the airship; in the distance you can hear Ma singing. Your hands feel hot. You squeeze them in and out of fists. Maybe this is what Ma means, when she sings about heartbreak. You feel shattered.

Ma is speaking animatedly about something. "But don't you think the chord progression is off?" she says. Da, sitting in a nearby chair with a tome in his lap, lifts his hands in assent, or perhaps the act of giving in.

"I've only ever been a scholar to your ear, my darling," he says, in the tone you know means he loves her even when she can be frustrating. You know that because he's used that tone on you many times. 

"Oh, you're no -- " Ma starts, but then she sees you. She stops talking at once. She is by your side in three steps and tightens your towel cape at your collarbone. She kneels by you. She smells like Gramma's cookie spices. "You forgot your clothes, silly boy," she says softly, smiling warmly upon you, and it makes your eyes well up.

When you tell Ma about the thoughts and the weirdness -- _ Does it all matter? Is the world actually bad? _ \-- she pulls you into her arms. She is warm and her skin squishes under your fingers and you sink your tears into her shoulder.

"Some things feel very big in our hearts," Ma says. Her voice reminds you of birds, sometimes, which makes you laugh and want to cry more. You don't know why. "Some things are hard for our souls to let go."

"My soul," you say, working through the bigness of that.

She smiles. She pushes your hair from your eyes and teases you about a haircut and tickles your ears and smothers your face in embarrassing kisses until you laugh and the thing around your heart relaxes just enough.

Ma rises to her feet. "I’m gonna go get your clothes, okay?" You nod. 

Da has been standing there the whole time, watching. But then Da levels with you. Da's eyes are red like the pretty earrings Ma wears sometimes. Very red. Like you could fall into them forever. 

"Souls are very strange," he says. He lays his hands on your shoulders. "I believe some of them even have memories."

You find this interesting. Your ears flick. "Was I thinking about a soul memory?"

Da makes the face you and Ma call the Old Man Sad Face. His eyes go out of focus and his mouth tilts into a smile with no mirth. He leans in, whispering a secret: "Maybe. What do you think?"

You aren't sure what Da wants you to say. You just shrug.

* * *

You love nothing in the world more than listening to Ma sing. You like it best when you are playing in the airship’s many halls and you hear it echoing from a lower floor, bubbling through the metal like steam. When no one is around to look, you’ll lay your head against the floor and feel transported very far away. You imagine the strangest things: lights that climb the sky. Buildings that shadow everything. A million, thousand stars. People cheering in auditoriums you have never seen...

“When did you first know you’d get married?” you like to ask Da. This time you ask while looking out over Aunt Lyna’s garden. The wind tosses your hair about and the air smells of roses.

“The first time she sang,” Da says.

Ma laughs every time at this. _ I was just 19. We were children. _ But Da always smiles. _ It’s alright. It’s always taken you a little bit to catch up to me. _ And then she whacks him with a spoon or something.

But you like to ask because it feels right, when he says that. Ma always tells the story of how Da reached through time and space to save her, and it is the best story of all time because it not only has travel through time and space but also Ma being awesome and killing monsters and bringing the night sky back. Then, then! She somehow reaches back through time and space to free Da from a tower, like a prince in a story. And then they get married and you’re born. It’s amazing.

“Your Da saved me so many times,” she says, when she tells you this story. You are sitting together, watching Da tell a frustrated Aunt Lyna how to plant a cabbage. “He’ll never admit it. But I think he is the more interesting character in that story.”

She says that, of course, and you nod. But you can’t help but think: If Ma’d been silent -- if Ma had never sang to Da, just the once -- there would be no world. You never would have been born.

* * *

You don't know much, but you know that Ma and Da are complicated. 

One time when you were supposed to be sleeping you heard Ma talking about Da like he was once made of crystal. _ Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake and I'll still lose you to it, _ she said. _ Like it knows somehow that its supposed to take you back. The tower. I'll wake up and you'll be all crystalline and silent. _

_ Oh no _ , Da said. _ We’re over. I left it at the first chance to find you again, love. I don't think it wants me like that anymore. _

_ ...you make it sound jealous. _

_ Maybe it is. _

They muttered together quietly until they started kissing, you're pretty sure, so you ran away immediately.

But this was very strange. Da is squishy and warm and has two blood red eyes and a tattoo on his arm and his neck and is not at all a man of crystal. You ask about this tattoo. He says it was from his time at school. You squint at this. You hope school does not make you get a tattoo, too. Everyone says you look like Da, except Da, who says you look like Ma, but they both have reddish hair and pale skin so it doesn't make a lot of difference to you. You even have one each of their eyes: one red and one seaglass green.

Ma has more wrinkles around her eyes and deep scratches on her face. She has a ragged, old gash on her shoulder. A few old burn marks here and there. Strange gold lines on her wrists where her veins should be. It makes you feel weird. Whenever you see them, you feel outside your own body with fascination and fury at whoever did this to Ma.

Not long after you overhear that, you get a terrible scratch by meddling with something in the engine room. So you decide to ask after her scars. Usually, she just laughs and tells you a big story about fighting a monster.

This time, Ma frowns. She touches your cheek and meets your gaze. Maybe it’s because she was talking about Da being a crystal man. Maybe she is just feeling sad. You don’t know.

"I fought in a lot of wars," she says. "I had to protect a lot of people. Because I was strong. And that's what strong people do."

You nod seriously. That's right. That's what all the heroes in all the tales do.

"I had to kill many people, too," she says.

You frown. "They were bad, though." Who would fight Ma, except people who were bad? Anyone that tried to hurt Ma deserved to die. You feel only a little guilt, thinking that.

Ma places her hand between your ears. Her eyes are dark and serious. "Not all of them, baby. Most of them were just...on the wrong side. Most of them thought that they were good."

Your heart speeds up. Your throat feels dry. "But they had to be bad," you say. "You're not bad, Ma."

She smiles down at you, but there's something broken about it. She rubs your ear. She says nothing for a long time, and guilt weighs on you in a thousand ways you do not understand. You think to run or squeeze her in a hug until she can't breathe but you are pinned by her gaze and so you do nothing. She says: "All we can do is try, my sweet pie."

And then she leans in very close, smiling as if she hadn't said anything at all. "Want to find the cookies I think your Da is hiding from us?"

You smile back, heart flying, and then she squeezes you in a hug instead. You feel forgiven and forgiveness in turn. Maybe you'll never know why.

* * *

They say she invented the harpsichord. 

(He won't remember this when he is born again.)

The melody of birds.

(Maybe he doesn't deserve to be born again. Maybe that is his punishment.)

He still listens for it.

(But perhaps the weight of freedom would be most damning. The proof he had been wrong all along.)

* * *

You wake up and run to Da. As usual, he is already awake as if waiting for you to come to him, sitting on the observation deck of the airship and staring at the stars through great, rounded glass. The ship does not fly at night. 

He turns toward the sound of your footsteps and beckons you to join him. You scramble onto his lap, suddenly feeling too cold to sit by him with dignity.

Da reminds you of the tales about mages in ancient cities that were swallowed up by water. Mages that knew everything there was to know. The gods smote them for knowing too many things. You hope very much that they do not turn their eyes upon Da.

"Trouble sleeping, my dear one?"

You nod into his chest. He wraps his warm arms around you and hums softly for a few moments, stroking your hair.

"Da," you say. "Where do people go when they die?"

Da takes a big breath and you move as his chest rises. His humming stops but he continues to stroke your hair. "Thinking deep thoughts tonight?" he asks, voice warm. 

You 'hmph' against his chest.

"They go to the Lifestream. Though there is still much we do not know and may never know..."

"Do people know each other there?"

Da's hand falls still on your back. If this were Ma, she would begin asking why you want to know this so bad, but Da never does that. He answers your questions plainly. "We don't know. You live in a...much changed world, from when I was small."

You are unsure what to make of that.

"But that means there’s so many more worlds for you to know,” he says. “For you to explore. You know how we sometimes have to be very careful and sit still in our chairs? How the world around our airship goes Purple Wavy?"

You nod. "When we go between the worlds."

"Yes. We couldn't always do that, you know. Before you were born...it was all very complicated but the worlds were all closed. Now we can do Purple Wavy and get there. And maybe one day that will include the Lifestream."

"And then I will find you and Ma and Gramma and then it'll be fine," you say, explaining this anxiety before you can even name it.

Da holds you tightly to him. "I have no doubts," he says, deep and warm. You don't look to see, but Da is looking up at the ceiling, trying not to cry. You are feeling sleepy again so you don't notice.

"When are we getting to Uncle Alphinaud? And Alisaie?" you ask.

"After you sleep tonight, love. One more sleep left."

"One more sleep until more books," you say, and that's all you remember before you drift off. When you wake up, you're tucked back in your bed. You think of the birds singing just outside your little window.

* * *

They say she invented the heart of music.

She wrote the tragedy about painters and light; it ends with a father giving in to the river of time. She wrote the comedy where three people marry in an explosion of color so beautiful that people in the audience sobbed. ("It is still, technically, a comedy," she would say when pressed.) She wrote music like velvet against the skin, heavy and sumptuous. She would pick your gaze apart in silence, distill you into notes that sung so high you'd see violet. The Convocation respected beauty, once -- respected creation that reached inside you and tore your heart from your ribs so you could examine it better.

This girl is not her. 

This girl sings dirges and arias and poorly-paced limericks, yes, but her soul doesn't pull apart with each new composition. The world shifts around her, certainly, but the air no longer shimmers when she works. This girl doesn't sob over coffee because a boor called her latest draft "uninspired." This girl isn't her.

(Perhaps that is one subtle gift of the sundering. The world ends each day in little ways but they still believe in the promise of tomorrow.)

"Fond of her, are you?"

The Exarch had deigned him with silence, then, but Hades knows the truth. Even in this life, the souls around her are pulled toward her suffering brightness. In these last moments of his life, aether seeping from the gash in his body, he realizes they would have perished before her original glory.

He wishes for that. To be scalded, even a little bit, by her grace.

He fades into the light, and can only hope.

* * *

Your world is many places crossing the great sky. Your world is here in the airship with Ma and Da and maybe a sister soon, or so Ma keeps saying. You press your hands against the glass and hope you'll remember this always -- the way the world looks, perfect and green, as you fly over it like birds. 

"What are you thinkin’ about so hard, cutie?"

Ma tousles your hair. Your love for her feels like it will eat the whole world.

"Nothin," you say. You look up at her and grin. "Just stories."


End file.
